Drillbit Taylor: Budget Bodyguard” is a surprisingly funny and sweet movie that had both my 17-year-old son and I cracking up and rooting for the underdogs.
Owen Wilson (Drillbit), once again plays a charming and lovable loser who ultimately makes good, but he does it so well that we’re still happy to go along for the ride. A homeless Army “veteran,” Drillbit is trying to score enough cash to follow his dream of moving to the great white North.
Meanwhile, tall and “freakishly skinny” Wade (Nate Hartley) and his short and pudgy sidekick, Ryan (Troy Gentile) get off to a bad start on their first day of high school, catching the attention of the school bully when Wade steps in to stop a shrimpy dweeb from being shoved into a locker. To compound a bad situation, Wade and Ryan have both shown up to school unbeknownst to one another wearing identical shirts from Hot Topic.
Things go downhill for the gang of now three (the mini-dweeb, Emmit, played by David Dorfman has latched onto the two friends) and they decide to pool their allowances and bar mitzvah money to hire a bodyguard. Unlike the 1980 film, “My Bodyguard,” which was obviously one of the inspirations for the script, rather than hiring another scary high schooler, the boys turn to the Internet as their hiring resource.
After interviewing an ex-Israeli Special Forces guy, a scary-looking Hispanic guy, and a heavy-lidded black guy (who in a twist is NOT a rapper although he does claim he once guarded Tupac,) they end up with Drillbit (the only guy they can afford).
Even though every character in this movie is a complete and total stereotype, producer Judd Apatow and writers Kristofer Brown and Seth Rogan found a way to make them engaging and interesting. Wade is the boy with a conscience while Ryan, who decides his nickname should be T-dog, has a big mouth and fancies himself an up-and-coming rapper. In one hilarious scene he jumps into a “rap off” with his nemesis where both get off some great lines and Ryan gets some props from the crowd.
One of the only surprising aspects of this movie was the lack of cursing. Sure, there are plenty of put-downs but the epithets are creative rather than scatological. There is nary an F-bomb or a fart joke in the whole movie! Even comedian Lisa Lampanelli cleans up her act, getting through her very brief but memorable scenes without coughing up anything nasty, but still managing to be funny.
The film has a PG-13 rating supposedly for crude sexual references (nowhere near as wince-evoking as most movies I’ve seen recently), strong bullying (well, that is what the movie is about but it could be scary for kids under 13), drug references (only if you count Wade’s mother asking if her son is using drugs), and partial nudity (ladies, this time it’s for you – Drillbit takes his showers at the beach and in at least two scenes is exposed standing just off the north Santa Monica boardwalk completely naked and not caring who’s looking).
It would have been nice to have a little more ethnic diversity in the main characters or in any characters, for that matter. The overwhelming whiteness of the movie casts a slight pall over things, although in a cute sub-plot Wade does fall hard for an Asian girl, going so far as to join the Asian Heritage club, and every other club the stereotypical over-achiever belongs to.
This is a movie that can be enjoyed equally by teens and parents sitting together in the same theater, a difficult feat to pull off these days.
